


in a crowded room project a debonair aloof impermanence

by spock



Category: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - All Media Types
Genre: Daydreaming, Fantasizing, M/M, Sharing Clothes, Sharing a Room, World Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 09:46:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2020422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spock/pseuds/spock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in a crowded room project a debonair aloof impermanence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SevlinRipley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SevlinRipley/gifts).



The little red light on Walter's phone is blinking when he comes into the office that morning, a beacon in the otherwise dark room. Walter's eyes keep getting drawn back to it as he sets down his things, shrugs off his jacket, leisurely sipping at a paper cup of subpar coffee, telling himself that waiting to listen to whatever message is waiting for him is an admirable display of self-control, even though there's nobody there to witness it, putting up a front for nobody but himself.

Three minutes pass and he still hasn't listened to it, idly twisting around in his chair, haphazardly poking at a neg roll. Finally he cracks, standing up nervously, running his palms against the grain of his slacks. He picks up the receiver and shifts it to his ear, hits the arrow button on the machine. The answering service tells him has one unheard message before actually letting it play.

Walter feels something scratch against his sides, a pair of hands somehow manage to slip up underneath his button-down and undershirt — even though Walter made sure that they were tucked into his pants after he got off the train — fingernails catching against his skin, and his body jolts in shock from the unexpectedness of their touch.

"You should always scope out a place before you let yourself relax into it," Sean whispers against the side of Walter's neck. His recorded voice is still playing in Walter's other ear, saying, ' _I'd really hoped to catch you coming into work early, Walter..._ '

"Sean?" Walter questions, his voice rasping. He hasn't spoken all morning, not once, not on the train, not to the doorman, not to the ground floor secretary manning the front desk, not to any of this coworkers on the elevator ride up.

"Especially places that you're the most used to, ones where it's easy to sneak up on people, where they're accustomed to everything, docile; they don't even think to suspect that something might've changed," Sean continues, hooking his chin over Walter's shoulder, wrapping his arms fully around Walter's middle, pulling him closer. Walter leans back into his warmth, lets the sound of Sean's voice — both recorded and in-person — settle around him, settle in him, deep in his mind.

"Nobody would bother breaking into the Time-Life Building, Sean. Nobody but you, and I'm not exactly worried about _you_ , of all people."

"You don't ever worry about little old me?" Sean tsks, voice still pitched low, intimate, especially in the dim lighting of the film archives, the stillness that comes with it. "I'm hurt." He starts rocking their bodies back and forth, the two of them swaying on their feet. Walter lets his eyes slip closed as he listens to Sean say his name, a patterned litany of, "Walter, Walter, Walter," a castigation and a chant rolled into one.

"Walter. Walter!"

Walter's eyes blink open to Hernando frowning at him from his desk across the room. The phone system is beeping at his ear, telling him to hit _one_ to replay the message, _seven_ to delete it, _nine_ to save. Walter heaves out a sigh, presses nine like he always does. He wonders what he'll do once the machine fills up, if he'll be able to bring himself to clear things to make space.

 

☁

He's had his resume up on CareerBuilder for three days now, gotten a couple job offers, but none of them bring about any excitement within him, so he lets them go unanswered. Odessa's been hassling him to upgrade to a smartphone already, trying to sell him on the convenience of being able to check his e-mail on the go, but Walter always feels his head spin when he looks at brands and models and pricing structures for data plans; always exits out of the tab, anxiety creeping up over him for no real reason other than the overabundance of choices to be made over what used to be such a simple thing like a phone. He figures he'll stick to with his dumbphone for phone-related things until they stop making dumbphones all together, his laptop more than enough _smart_ technology for him, anyway.

There's an only one new job offer waiting for him Thursday morning, nearly lost between the spam of eHarmony trying to get him back and an e-mail thread he's been CC'd in on, keeping tabs with Hernando and Tim and Gary. Walter clicks it, hoping that this'll finally be his dream job, even though he has no idea what that even is anymore, only that he'll recognize it if he see's it. It reads:

>   
>  _W.M.,_
> 
> _Heading to Christchurch to document rebuilding efforts. Found myself in need of an assistant for the journey. I've been told my method regarding the handling of negatives is indiscriminate at best; your experience would be welcome._
> 
> _S.O'C._
> 
> _P.S. I've already spoken to your reference._
> 
>  

Walter beams at the screen, already starting to mentally catalog what he'll need to bring with him, googles what the weather in New Zealand is like at this time of year. He's halfway to being packed before he even realizes that he should answer Sean's message, let him know that Walter’s taking the job. He rushes to do so, and then gets back to packing a few weeks worth of clothes, debating with himself on the pros and cons of spending a day traipsing through the city to collect the supplies he doesn't already have versus just ordering them off Amazon and paying double to have them shipped next day air. He wonders if his mom still pays for a Prime account.

He's so caught up that it isn't until nightfall that he thinks to call Cheryl, but once it pops into his mind he stops completely in what he's doing and rings her up, excitedly recounting the story to her before she's even managed to get out so much as a ' _Hello_ '.

"Oh wow," she says, excitement coloring her voice. "That's amazing, Walter! I'm so happy for you." Walter's smiling into the receiver of his phone, but his mirth dampens a bit when she asks, "But it's just, um, how long will you be gone for, exactly?"

"I have no idea," Walter admits, sitting down on his couch, running a hand through his hair. Sean never takes breaks, just flies from one place to the next once he's gotten the pictures he needed. Walter can't imagine that this will be anything different. Once he's done, Sean probably say his goodbyes to Walter, no longer needing an assistant, especially since he's never had use for one in the past, and Walter will come home and pick up his job search again, keep looking for something permanent, something stable. He tells all of this to Cheryl, but she hems and haws at his thought process.

"What if he needs you for longer, though?" Cheryl presses. "You always wanted to do something like, right? It was your plan to go traveling as a kid; this could be your chance. I don't think I'd ever heard you happier than when you were calling me from Iceland."

"Sure, but..." Walter trails off, thinking. "If I keep the City as a sort of, I don't know, a home base, somewhere I'll come back to every few weeks, and, I mean, you could always —"

"I have a son, Walter," Cheryl cuts him off, not unkindly. "I'm settled here. I like it here," she laughs, adding, "I like writing a good mystery, solving things, hearing stories, but traipsing around the globe is just _not_ my thing."

"I don't," Walter starts, falters, stops.

"Walter, we've known each other for like, a week," she laughs. "Sometimes people come and go. I've had people before for Phil, and then I had Phil and my son, and now over this past little while I've gotten to know you too. I got to work at Life while it was still good, and now I'm maybe going to get this stupid little novel published. That stuff makes me happy. Traveling and meeting new people and stuff, that makes you happy. So go be happy."

 

☁

Walter helps rebuild a few dozen schools while they're in Christchurch, something to do in his free hours in-between sleeping and assisting Sean on shoots. Sean fills up a two film rolls worth of Walter busting his ass to help shift drywall.

"Nobody wants to see a pasty New Yorker doing construction on the other side of the world," Walter bitches at him, trying to catch his breath and swallow down a bottle of water at the same time, rushing. His five minute break is also up, nearly time to climb back up onto the roof and finish up the roof he's shingling.

"You're a hot commodity," Sean tells him, distracted. "Man who donned the cover of Time's last print issue? Everybody'd chomp at the bit to have you pop up in a centerfold." He's swapping a new roll into his camera and Walter knows that he's only half-listening to what Walter's saying, but it's just as well, because the last five times Walter's called him out on it, quizzed him on what Walter had been talking about, Sean got a perfect score, could recall each and every word verbatim; in one ear and somehow caught in the reel of his mind, remembered in perfect clarity. It's what makes him so good at his job. It's also one of the many things that makes him so wonderfully irritating to Walter.

"Yeah, well nobody asked you," Walter mutters, tugging off his sweat-soaked shirt and rifling through his backpack for the spare he could have sworn he remembered to pack that morning.

"Beautiful things don't ask for attention," Sean mutters, quickly closing the film door of his camera and raising it to his eye, snapping pictures of some children that've been shyly lurking around the edge of the construction site. Looks like they've finally found the courage to move in closer; Walter smiles as he watches them play around with a few spare hardhats that always seem to be lying around.

Once he's got a shot he likes, Sean raises up slowly out of his haunch groaning as each vertebrae in his back cracks. He nudges Walter, says, ' _here_ ', and hands Walter one of his own t-shirts. It's a too big for Walter — the collar stretched out with a hole in it, a few flecks of blood staining them hem — but once he pulls it on, feels it settle over his shoulders, it feels just as well fitted as any of his own shirts have ever been.

 

☁

Cheryl was right; Sean does ask Walter to accompany him on his next trip, the two of them boarding a nerve-wrackingly rickety plan to Gansu, the negatives of Christchurch's recovery sitting at the bottom of the mailbox they dropped them in. They're long gone, coasting over the Atlantic with their seat belts unbuckled, enjoying the freedom cruising altitude provides, before the postman even has time to pick them up.

☁

Walter decides that the Zhangye Danxia landform is his favorite place on Earth. He hasn't seen everything yet, and he wouldn't say no to exploring another planet, but he can't imagine anything taking his breath away as quickly as the rolling, rainbow hills of Danxia managed to do.

He and Sean camp out at the bottom of one of the smaller mountain formations. Walter stares at the red rock beneath their shared tent, the bright, lime green a few feet away from it, with golden yellow not far beyond that. He never knew rocks could be so mind-boggling.

"Would you like for me to give a moment alone with your hill, Walter?" Sean teases.

' _Yes_ ', he wants to say. "Shut up," he says instead, sounding thirty years younger than he actually is and feeling completely unrepentant of it.

Sean laughs and shakes his head, eyebrows raised, whispers, "Well I never," before finishing off the last dregs of his tea. The locals gave them a brick of leaves when they arrived, and then another once they told them that they'd be roughing it out in the wilderness instead of staying in the village. Its dark, heady, more bitter than most of the coffee Walter's had, largely because they have nothing to cut the taste — both he and Sean forgetting to restock their sugar supply once they landed in China. Walter doesn't know if it's a sign that he's gotten used to the tea or if the stuff has just killed off his tastebuds, but after swallowing down three cupfuls he's found himself growing fond of the taste.

"Let's hit they hay," Sean advises, tossing some dirt onto the waining remains of their campfire, stomping on a few times just to make sure that it's completely out.

Walter pulls back the flap of their tent and pauses. "Shoot," he says, follows that up with, "Shit." Sean comes up behind him, uses the one extra inch he has on Walter to peek over his shoulder. "I never got around to buying a sleeping bag."

"You should have said, I would've found a spare for you." Sean says. The way he's standing has his mouth positioned exactly against Walter's ear. "But we both know how you treated the last gift I got you, so maybe it's best that I didn't. Probably would've tossed it by now." Walter groans and pitches his elbow back, jabbing Sean in the stomach.

"I said I was sorry! Let it go."

Sean rubs at his middle and laughs, shaking his head, "Just share mine with me." Walter swallows, adam's apple feeling too big for his throat as he shakes his head, agrees to Sean's proposal.

They sit at the mouth of the tent, pressed together from shoulder to hip, unlacing their boots and stuffing their socks inside to help keep out spiders and snakes and god knows what else. Sean instantly starts shucking off his pants once he's got his shoes off, so Walter does the same, undressing until he's left in nothing but his thermals. They crawl inside, zip up the entrance flaps, and Walter watches as Sean tosses a few of his spare blankets onto the floor of the tent before unzipping his sleeping bag. He waves Walter over, so Walter goes, lets himself be pushed down so that Sean can tuck him in, shoving Walter's half of the sleeping bag under his body before laying down and wrapping himself up, keeping the heat trapped under the material as best they can.

Walter tries to fall asleep, lays in the silence of the night, closes his eyes and thinks of how beautiful the mountains looked as the sunset. It almost works, until Sean starts to shift, twisting himself so that he's laying on his side.

"Walter," he says. Walter opens his eyes and blinks once, hard, clearing his vision, because there's _no way_ , but — Sean's still about a hairsbreadth away from the tip of Walter's nose, staring directly into his eyes once he reopens them.

"Um," Walter's heart starts racing, from zero to sixty in half a second, less maybe, his breathing picking up too.

"This is a good moment," Sean mumbles. His head moves away, just slightly, but it feels like a million miles to Walter, and he wants to tell Sean to come back, come closer.

"It is," Walter agrees. He can just barely make out the smile — a real one, not his usual half-assed showing of teeth, or even his more genuine smirk — on Sean's face, light from brightness of moon and stars filtering in through the nylon fabric of the tent.

They lean forward at the same time, mouths slotting together easily. Walter reaches out and wraps his arm around Sean's hips, tugs and yanks until their bodies are connected by their lips all the way down to the tips of their toes. The kisses start off chaste enough, but they quickly get more and more heated. Walter slips a hand down into the back of Sean's long johns, smoothing his fingers along the curve of Sean's ass before changing his mind, twisting his arm around so that it's trapped between their bodies, squeezing his hand around Sean's dick.

Their lips break apart, Sean sucking in a gasp. Both their eyes are open, staring at one another as Walter slowly starts to move his hand, leisurely moving it up and down, alternating his grip. His tongue darts out, wetting his already slick lips, still so close that it grazes Sean's lips as well, causing both of them to shudder.

"Walter," Sean gasps. "C'mon, Walter. Walter, c'mon now."

Walter comes back to himself slowly, blinking to clear his hazy vision. His brain feels slow, muggy. "Hmmm?" He murmurs, confused. They were just kissing, not five seconds ago. His dick's starting to get hard, aroused from the kissing, from listening to the noises Sean was making while Walter jerked him off. He squeezes his hand again, expecting to feel the fullness of Sean's erection, to draw another grunt out from him, but instead nothing happens, his hand pawing at the empty air.

"Let's hit the hay," Sean repeats, patient, but not bothering to hide his mirth. Walter nods, not trusting himself to say anything. He doesn't remember the last time he zoned out like that; _really_ can't remember the last time he started to get hard without first needing to at least touch himself a little.

 

☁

Walter's father once told him that regardless of how closed or unwilling you are to accepting new ideas, there will never come a day where you don't learn something new about yourself.

Walter has learned that he has a slight fear of caves.

The Sơn Đoòng Cave is cavernous in every way, shape, and form. It's so large that it doesn't even feel like a cave, stalagmites rising taller than they have any right to be, creating its own little stone New York City, reminding him of home for the first time in months, but the thought is fleeting, a blip on his mental radar, a quick remembrance that not everybody lives their lives like he does, not unlike the few times he's sent postcards back home to his mother and sister, and Rich too, sometimes.

Walter deals with the mouth of the cave just fine, shaking off the slight sense of foreboding, his chin held high. It's when Sean bullies him into scaling up one of the walls, walking across a tightrope of a ledge so that they can army crawl their way into a narrow opening — a cave within a cave: something that will haunt his nightmares until the day he drops dead, which could be something that happens sooner than he previously expected, if Sean keeps him in this fucking cave any longer — so that Sean can get an areal shot without having to order a crane.

"Why?" Walter demands, voice echoing loudly and spooking a few bats. He presses his face down into the dirt, shielding himself, even though the bats are nowhere near him, and even if they were, they'd have to squeeze past Sean's bulk to get at him.

Odessa and he spent hours of their childhood making fun of Indiana Jones and Bruce Wayne. _Never again_ , Walter decides. He knows their pain, now.

"Because I couldn't fit a bag up here, but I can fit you. Hush now," Sean exhales in a whisper. Walter listens to his shutter click a few times, rapid pulses followed by slow, more leisurely snaps.

This would be the perfect time to have one of his episodes, Walter decides. He wills his mind to zone out, take him back to Addis Ababa, or Fernando de Noronha, or Ishigaki, or Chennai, or Siem Reap, or Cappadocia, or back to the damn Highlands, where his whole adventure kink manifested in the first place, so that he can yell at himself, play the part of Ghost of Fears Yet to Come and tell the cautionary tale of how schlepping around the globe as the great Sean O'Connell's assistant-understudy- _whatever_ was the worst choice he'd ever make in his life.

"Walter!" Sean says without bothering to lower his voice, which in the cave is akin to shouting at the top of his lungs, the echoes of it disturbing the bats again. Walter jerks in shock, dropping his ostrich impression and lifting his face up off the ground so that he can look at Sean, who's shifted off of his belly and onto his side, back pressed up against one of the cave's walls. "Crawl up here and get some fresh air, I can practically hear that nervous breakdown you're having."

Walter takes a few deep breaths to steady himself before turning onto his side and worming his way up the slight incline, fitting his body next to Sean's at the opening of the cave. It's a tight fit, his entire front pressed tight to Sean's, his back brushing up against the wall with each time his lungs expand. It doesn't make him feel any more claustrophobic, though; if anything, being in such close quarters with Sean helps to calm him down, soothes some part of his brain that Walter is too stressed out to think too deeply about at the moment.

"God, how long have you been shaking?" Sean demands in a harsh whisper. He wraps an arm around Walter's waist, pulling him in closer to his body. The tightness of his grip helps Walter relax further, slowing his tremors. Walter really, really hopes that enough fear is left in him to prevent any awkward situations. He's too old to be worrying over inappropriate, opportunistic boners, but after the incident from a month back Walter is on high alert, unsure of what his body will do when given the chance.

"Here," Sean says, voice gentle, running his hand across Walter's back. "Hang your head over the ledge. Its like when you're a kid, sticking your head out the car window."

It does help, has Walter drifting into a place within his mind that isn't quite as all-immersive and fantastical as his daydreams. It mostly feels like he's shut his brain off, mind focused solely the sounds surrounding him, the gears inside Sean's camera as they click and whirr, coming back to himself only when Sean nudges him for another canister of film, putting the used one in the zip-up pocket of his hoodie for safe keeping before zoning off again.

"Hey, Sean?" Walter asks. His tongue feels thick within the confines of his mouth, heavy. For the first time since he'd been fired from Life, speaking feels like a chore.

Sean hmms, letting Walter know that he heard him. "No more caves, okay?" Walter says, letting his eyes fall shut again.

"Alright buddy." Walter can feel Sean's fingers brushing through his hair, thumb stoking at his temple. It feels really, really nice. "No more caves, I promise you that."

 

☁

"I never thought I'd come to miss hot dogs so much," Walter says, or tries to say, anyway. He's a got a hot dog and a half stuffed into his mouth, still chewing — probably has a bit of mustard on his chin — gaze fixed on the other half that's he's holding, lonely in his hand, trying to figure out if there's any extra room to be found in his jaw so that it can be crammed in next to its brother.

"Really? I had no idea," Sean's voice is as dry as the desert they've just flown in from, oogling at Walter like he's some sideshow attraction. Walter isn't sure if Sean's amazed or disgusted by him, but he doesn't care; these shitty, British hot dogs are heaven compared to all the strange things he'd been forced to eat over the past week. "I'd just assumed deep-throating was your preferred method of ingesting hot dogs."

"Deep-throating is great for a lot of things," Walter defends instinctually, without considering what it is that he's actually saying. He's taken to refuting everything that Sean says, just for the sport of it. It's hasn't caused him any trouble or embarrassment before, so he's never questioned the possible downsides to the habit, but that ship has firmly sailed; a downside has officially been found.

Before Walter can so much as think about his face flushing in mortification, Sean beats him to the punch, face heating up, the red blush prominent even under his omnipresent sunburn-turned-tan.

Walter's mouth drops a bit open in shock, but he quickly closes it again, chewing his food and swallowing quickly so that he can smirk Sean's way finally — _finally_ — the victor in this little game of theirs for once, delighting in the way that Sean refuses to meet his gaze.

 

☁

Sean lets Walter take the lead on their current trip, even though he refuses to tell him who it is that's commissioned their latest expedition, or even where they're going, keeping him completely in the dark to everything except the fact that they're in Norway. Walter's steering the little boat they've rented, crossing over the northern most side of Ringedalsvatnet, just as Sean instructed before checking-out for the rest of the journey, dozing in the back with his feet put up. Walter decided to ignore him five hours ago, taking a vow of silence until Sean tells him just what the hell is going on.

"You think you're being cute again," Walter says at last, breaking his vow, undoubtedly playing into whatever game Sean's cooked up. "But you're not. You're never, ever cute."

"You're always so _mean_ to me, Walter," Sean complains. He's not even looking at Walter, hasn't for the past two hours; it's starting to piss him off. In a move he's not exactly proud of, Walter jerks his body hard to the left, both hands gripping the edge of their boat so that it rocks with him. "Oh jesus, Walter, now who's being cute!" Sean shouts, kicking at Walter's back. "If you must know, this is a personal trip. Nobody's paying us to be here. It's something I always wanted to do and I decided now was as good a time as any to check it off the bucket list."

Walter hums, debating with himself on if he should say anything, before he cracks. "So is this like a birthday gift to yourself, or something?" Sean's eyebrows shoot up, head canting back. "What?" Walter demands, defensive. "I know things!" Sean knows when to let the silence speak for him, always has, and it works on Walter every goddamn time. Even though Walter clued in to his tricks months ago, he still hasn't found a way to withstand playing into them. "Alright, fine: my mom mentioned looking up your birthday on Wikipedia, said it was coming up in her last e-mail."

"Ah, I should've known," Sean says, reclining back onto the bench he'd commandeered for himself. "Walter Mitty's default mode is to think of nobody but himself, of course."

"I think about you more than you'd care to know," Walter snaps. He's been sharing little tidbits like that more and more lately. He's closer to fifty than forty and the thought of keeping his feelings a secret at his age completely exhausts him. Walter's going to keep at it, get it so that he's put everything out there, make his feelings Sean's problem too, not just something that Walter has to shoulder on his own.

Sean's eyebrows rise again, but he keeps quiet, looking impressed. Walter shots him a look — half smug, half complete and total exasperation, vexation — and turns back around, picking up the oars and rowing them to shore.

From then on it's a fairly pleasant hike, by their standards; a four hour, give or take, trek to the top of the mountain. They don't bother with stopping for lunch, pulling sandwiches from their backpacks and eating them as they walk, sharing a thermos of coffee between the two of them. It's been raining off and on all morning, so they've got the whole trail to themselves, saner minds knowing better than to risk breaking their necks or being struck by lightning just to scale a mountain, putting it off for a clearer day.

"That's half the fun," Sean insists, and that argument lasts them all the way to the top of the ridge, where the sight of an insanely large glacier peeking through the mist has Walter cutting himself off mid-sentence.

"Oh wow," Walter says, getting as close to the cliff as he dares. "Can we stand on it?" he asks, pointing at the jut of rock poking out from the mountain's wall.

"That's the main attraction," Sean tells him. "Trolltunga, and then over there," he says, pointing at the glacier, "is Folgefonna." Walter repeats the words a few times, trying to pronounce them with a Norwegian accent like Sean does. "Very good," Sean commends when Walter finally manages to get them right. Walter knows that Sean is at least half-taunting him in moments like this, but all that means is that the other half is genuine exaltation, and that's what makes Walter light up, knowing that Sean can't even fully tease him with sincerity anymore, not even when he probably deserves it.

They stand right at the edge of the cliff, the toes of their shoes hanging just slightly over it, suspended over the drop, enjoying the silence, the stillness.

"Alright, let's take a picture," Sean decides, stepping away from the ledge and setting his backpack down on the rock, pulling out the only camera he bothered to pack. With their backs to the cliff, the sun's still mostly in front of them, not quiet yet reaching its midpoint in the center of the sky, even if the days are starting to get shorter already.

"Are you sure you don't mean selfie?" Walter asks, just to be an asshole. Sean comes up next to him and tosses an arm around his shoulder, pulling Walter's body in close to his own.

"Don't say that word around me," Sean tells him seriously, holding the camera close to his chest so that he can adjust the lens with both hands while still keeping a stranglehold around Walter's neck. "I'll shove you off this cliff and never look back."

"Okay, okay," Walter laughs, knowing when to admit defeat while he's still ahead.

They lean in close, pressing their cheeks together so that their bodies cover as little of the scenery behind as they can manage, both wanting as much of it in the frame as possible; if Sean stretched his arm out any further he'd probably dislocate his shoulder. Finger hovering just over the shutter, Sean mutters out, "Alright." Walter watches as his finger twitches, making up his mind at the last second to turn, taking half a step so that he's positioned between the camera and Sean, dipping in, pressing his lips to Sean's.

Sean kisses him back instantly, their mouths moving together easily, languidly. Walter licks into his mouth, tastes the coffee that they shared earlier. He loves that he and Sean taste the same, that they share flavor all their own even without swapping spit. They probably always do, unfailingly eating and drinking the same things as the other, sharing everything. Walter keeps his eyes open, as does Sean — his eyes crinkle up, smiling into the kiss, and it makes Walter smile back at him.

Walter pulls back, noses against Sean's cheek, feels Sean mimic the motion back at him, the tip of Sean's nose catching against Walter's week-old stubble.

"Yep," Sean says, face unreadable as his eyes dip down to stare at Walter's lips. After a moment they make a slow slide up Walter's profile, meeting his eyes once their line of sight is even again, smirk settling over his lips. "That was a moment all right."

"Personal enough for you?" Walter goads, because that's what his job is now, professional thorn-in-the-side, for when seeing the most wondrous sights in the world starts to become monotonous, and you need someone around to make you appreciate every hard-fought morsel of peace and quiet.

"Of course," Sean agrees. "You got anything else you want to surprise me with? I've got all day; this light's good for a few more hours yet."

"Nope," Walter says, mouth popping and the second syllable. Sean's eyes drop down this his lips at the noise, drawn in as if it were a sirens call. Walter grins, "That was it. You can take your picture now."

"Oh, _may I_?" Sean intones, sarcasm warring with the embarrassment in his voice. "Alright then, I think I will."

They both get back into their positions, cheek to cheek. Sean holds the camera up again, waiting a few seconds for his arm to steady. Sean's presses down on the shutter on the shutter and holds it, making sure that they've got options to work with. Walter lets the first one go past before he turns again, rapid quick, presses a kiss to Sean's cheek. Sean pulls him in closer with the arm he still has wrapped around Walter's shoulder. Walter can feel the muscles of Sean's face tense and move, knows that Sean's smiling, grinning. The shutter of the camera's still clicking away, capturing a rapid burst of their movements, imprinting them onto the filmstrip. Most of the photos will probably come out terribly — they're jostling around so much — but Walter doesn't mind. It's not like they can't swap in another round of film and try again.

**Author's Note:**

> summary is a pulled quote from the original [walter mitty](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1939/03/18/the-secret-life-of-walter-mitty-2?currentPage=all) short story.
> 
> we matched on something else, but my eyes kept coming back to the prompts you gave for this movie. so i rewatched it, and that got me even _more_ inspired and, well, you're just too damn good at coming up with prompts, okay??? i really hope that i did them justice and that you liked this.


End file.
